"I wasn't eating. I wasn't sleeping. I was a mess." That's David Beckham on the aftermath of his 1998 World Cup red card — not some tabloid's interpretation, but his own words, finally spoken out loud in his 2023 Netflix documentary. It took him 25 years to say it.
The moment itself is football folklore. Saint-Etienne, England vs Argentina, round of 16. Simeone went down after a flick from Beckham's boot. The referee reached for red. England lost on penalties. And an entire nation spent the next several years making one man carry the blame for all of it.
A feud that quietly became a friendship
What makes this story stranger than the 1998 drama itself is how it ended. Not with a grudge, but a photograph. After Argentina won the 2022 World Cup final, Beckham posted a picture of the two of them together: "Congratulations my friend." Simeone reposted it with "Good to see you always!"
They were spotted together again in Miami — Beckham's city, essentially, given his ownership of Inter Miami — when Argentina played Cape Verde in the round of 32. Two men who were once the central figures in one of English football's most painful nights, watching a match side by side.
The Argentina connection runs deeper than just Simeone. Messi and Rodrigo de Paul both play for Inter Miami. Gonzalo Higuaín, a 2014 World Cup finalist, previously did too. Beckham has effectively rebuilt a significant part of his post-football life around the country that contributed to his lowest point.
What he said that actually matters
The Netflix documentary gave Beckham room to be honest about 1998 in a way he'd never been before. "I made a stupid mistake. It changed my life. I felt very vulnerable and alone," he said. "The whole country hated me. Hated me."
He also admitted he still can't fully forgive himself. "I can't forgive myself for that. That's the tough part. I was the one that made the mistake."
He did get a measure of revenge in 2002 — scoring the penalty that beat Argentina and sent England through while the South Americans went home early. But closure, it seems, is a slower process than a single goal.
"I don't think I have ever talked about it just because I can't," he said. "I find it hard to talk through what I went through because it was so extreme."
Now, with England and Argentina set to meet again in a World Cup semi-final, both men are back in the stands as spectators. Same rivalry, different era. The stakes are the same. The fallout, whatever it is, will land on someone else this time.
